Angels and Demons
Angels and Demons is released on May 14th
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Tuesday, 12, May 2009 08:50
Directed by Ron Howard, out May 14th in cinemas, starring Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgard, running time 138 mins.
In a nutshell...
Run -> look at obscure religious symbol -> draw inexplicable conclusion -> more running
What's it all about?
Having uncovered "one of the greatest cover-ups in human history" - in a fictional novel, don't forget - symbology professor Robert Langdon (Hanks) again finds himself at odds with an ancient organisation and a mystery laden with helpful (if incomprehensible to a normal human being) clues along with way.
After the four cardinals most likely to be elected the next Pope are captured by a deadly assassin, Langdon and beautiful nuclear physicist Vittoria Vetra (Zurer) embark on a race around Rome to find the link behind the shadowy ancient brotherhood of the Illuminati and a deadly weapon capable of flattening the Holy See.
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Who's in it?
Oscar-winner Tom Hanks reprises his role as Harvard scholar Robert Langdon with Ron Howard returning as director. They are joined on their chase around the Vatican by young Obi-Wan himself, Ewan McGregor, Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer, Pirates of the Caribbean and Mamma Mia! actor Stellan Skarsgard and German veteran Armin Mueller-Stahl.
As an example...
"Professor Langdon - you have spent your life searching for symbols like the one in your hand. How much longer are we going to pretend you're not coming [to Rome]?" - Claudio Vincenzi
"Our church is at war. We are under attack from an old enemy. The Illuminati. They have struck us from within and are threatening us all with destruction from their new god Science." - Camerlengo Patrick McKenna
The Camerlengo questions Langdon's faith
Langdon asks for access to the most tightly-held secrets of the Catholic Church
What the others say
"Shorter, tidier and altogether sharper. But enough on Tom Hanks' hair; how's the film? Thankfully the same applies to this Da Vinci Code follow-up, director Ron Howard acting on the lessons he learnt from that bloated 2006 misstep to deliver an exciting, kinetic and engrossing thriller that, this time around, doesn't treat Dan Brown's source novel as Holy Scripture." - Chris Hicks, Total Film
"Plucking the same violent, occult strings as Da Vinci while avoiding its leadenness, Angels keeps the action coming for the best part of 139 minutes. Taking to heart the critics' lament that the first Dan Brown novel-to-film was talky, static and arcane, director Ron Howard and his crew have worked hard to make Professor Robert Langdon's return a thrilling, faster-paced walk in the park." - Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter
So is it any good?
Should we ignore the rise of Lady GaGa and retain some hope for the salvation of the civilised world, it must be presumed that the natural reaction among the 80 million+ readers of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code was not one of stunned sudden understanding that 2,000 years of Christian history were wrong but rather an acknowledgement that despite Brown's frequent historical inaccuracies and lamentable writing style, he sure can spin a yarn.
Unfortunately, the seasoned actor-directing pairing of Tom Hanks and Ron Howard managed to remove dramatic tension and hilariously hackneyed action sequences from the novel for the 2006 film adaptation, producing instead a deathly dull, interminable film. Thespian talent including Hanks, Sir Ian McKellen and Audrey Tautou were reduced to portraying paper thin characters, spouting patronising and expositionary dialogue and the Catholic Church and critics were quick to pour scorn on the Columbia Pictures release.
Still, with 80 million having read Brown's Da Vinci Code and the film earning $750 million+ worldwide, what do critics know? Well, evidently a little, given the notable changes Howard has made in adapting Brown's Angels and Demons, a literary prequel to The Da Vinci Code but translated for the big screen as a sequel to Langdon's search for the truth behind the Grail legend.
With a far speedier opening than the book's neverending 'idiot's guide to CERN' introduction and a script with at least a sense of its own ridiculousness rather than the Da Vinci Code's solemn, 'this is the word of Brown. ' tone, it's a marked improvement on its leaden-footed predecessor.
Hanks is thankfully less on autopilot than in The Da Vinci Code and though an opening swimming pool scene in Speedos is nearly as big a shock as his mullet in the quest for the grail, he's given a chance to inject some humour as the false gravity of the search for the holy bloodline is abandoned in favour of a good ol'-fashioned race-against-time thriller, complete with double-crosses and last-minute twists.
It's also lively enough when the infuriating 'Langdon and Vittoria on the move' style of exposition stops and a clearly enhanced budget allows Howard to swing a Sam Raimi-esque camera around some striking visual set pieces, including a gruesome burning at the stake and a hugely impressive climax, as St Peter's Square bears the brunt of a heavenly explosion.
But a bounding Hans Zimmer score and the film's increased scope and pace can still not disguise the airport thriller constraints of the schlocky countdown plot and barely-traced characters. Harrison Ford's famed onset outburst to George Lucas - "You can type this s**t, but you sure can't say it" - comes to mind frequently as Langdon helpfully outlines the entire history of the Catholic Church, Roman architecture and the Illuminati while his audience, both onscreen and in cinemas across the globe, are slowly bored into submission.
Countless scenes are set up so as to outline just how much of an expert in history and 'symbology' Langdon is, while surrounding characters are portrayed as comparative simpletons, and a supposedly tense sequence in the Vatican Archives leaves the viewer considering nothing more than the fine quality of the Holy Father's choice of double glazing. Zurer is given more to do than Audrey Tautou but still serves little purpose other than asking Langdon 'what does that mean?' while McGregor unleashes a dreadful 'Oirish' accent in one of the weakest performances of his career.
An overlong coda, with a plot twist that works well on the page but feels flat after the fireworks of a set piece to rival Michael Bay, provides a downbeat ending to a passable portion of action mutton dressed as lamb.
5.5/10
Lewis Bazley